Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising

Best-selling author Ryan Holiday, the acclaimed marketing guru for American Apparel and many bestselling authors and multiplatinum musicians, explains the new rules and provides valuable examples and case studies for aspiring growth hackers. Whether you work for a tiny start-up or a Fortune 500 giant, if you're responsible for building awareness and buzz for a product or service, this is your road map.

Made to Stick

Mark Twain once observed, "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on." His observation rings true: urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas (business people, teachers, politicians, journalists, and others) struggle to make their ideas "stick". In this indispensable guide, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds draw their power from the same six traits.

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Why do some products capture our attention, while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us? This audiobook introduces listeners to the "Hook Model," a four steps process companies use to build customer habits. Through consecutive hook cycles, successful products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back repeatedly - without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging. Hooked is a guide to building products people can't put down.

Everybody Writes is a go-to guide to attracting and retaining customers through stellar online communication, because in our content-driven world, every one of us is, in fact, a writer. If you have a web site, you are a publisher. If you are on social media, you are in marketing. And that means that we are all relying on our words to carry our marketing messages. We are all writers.

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

What do Starbucks and JetBlue and KrispyKreme and Apple and DutchBoy and Kensington and Zespri and Hard Candy have that you don't? How do they continue to confound critics and achieve spectacular growth, leaving behind former tried-and true brands to gasp their last? Face it, the checklist of tired P's marketers have used for decades to get their product noticed - Pricing, Promotion, Publicity, to name a few - aren't working anymore.

Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth

Most startups don't fail because they can't build a product. Most startups fail because they can't get traction. Startup advice tends to be a lot of platitudes repackaged with new buzzwords, but Traction is something else entirely. As Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares learned from their own experiences, building a successful company is hard. For every startup that grows to the point where it can go public or be profitably acquired, hundreds of others sputter and die.

Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior

If you're like most people, you think that your choices and behaviors are driven by your individual personal tastes and opinions. You wear a certain jacket because you like the way it looks. You picked a particular career because you found it interesting. The notion that our choices are driven by our own personal thoughts and opinions is patently obvious. Right? Wrong. Without our realizing it, other people's behavior has a huge influence on everything we do at every moment of our lives, from the mundane to the momentous occasion.

An accessible and practical toolkit that teams and companies in all industries can use to increase their customer base and market share, this book walks listeners through the process of creating and executing their own custom-made growth hacking strategy. It is a must listen for any marketer, entrepreneur, innovator or manager looking to replace wasteful big bets and "spaghetti-on-the-wall" approaches with more consistent, replicable, cost-effective, and data-driven results.

Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator

"You’ve seen it all before. A malicious online rumor costs a company millions. A political sideshow derails the national news cycle and destroys a candidate. Some product or celebrity zooms from total obscurity to viral sensation. What you don’t know is that someone is responsible for all this. Usually, someone like me. I’m a media manipulator. In a world where blogs control and distort the news, my job is to control blogs—as much as any one person can."

Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less

How do you cut through the noise, commotion, and bad information that is right now cluttering up your customers' digital space? Epic Content Marketing. One of the world's leading experts on content marketing, Joe Pulizzi explains how to draw prospects and customers in by creating information and content they actually want to engage with. No longer can we interrupt our customers with mediocre content (and sales messages) our customers don't care about. Epic Content Marketing takes you step by step through the process of developing stories that inform and entertain and compel customers to act - without actually telling them to.

All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World

Every marketer tells a story. And if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche Cayenne is vastly superior to a $36,000 VW Touareg, which is virtually the same car. We believe that $225 Pumas will make our feet feel better, and look cooler, than $20 no-names...and believing it makes it true.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

As Al Ries and Jack Trout - the world-renowned marketing consultants and best-selling authors of Positioning - note, you can build an impressive airplane, but it will never leave the ground if you ignore the laws of physics, especially gravity. Why then, they ask, shouldn’t there also be laws of marketing that must be followed to launch and maintain winning brands? In The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Ries and Trout offer a compendium of 22 innovative rules for understanding and succeeding in the international marketplace.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

In The Tipping Point, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell looks at why major changes in society happen suddenly and unexpectedly. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a few fare-beaters and graffiti artists fuel a subway crime wave, or a satisfied customer fill the empty tables of a new restaurant. These are social epidemics, and the moment when they take off, when they reach their critical mass, is the Tipping Point.

A pioneer of content marketing, Joe Pulizzi has cracked the code when it comes to the power of content in a world where marketers still hold fast to traditional models that no longer work. In Content Inc., he breaks down the business-startup process into six steps, making it simple for you to visualize, launch, and monetize your own business.

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won't create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren't learning from them. It's easier to copy a model than to make something new: doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Influence, the classic book on persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say yes - and how to apply these understandings. Dr. Robert Cialdini is the seminal expert in the rapidly expanding field of influence and persuasion. His 35 years of rigorous, evidence-based research, along with a three-year program of study on what moves people to change behavior, has resulted in this highly acclaimed book. You'll learn the six universal principles, how to use them to become a skilled persuader - and how to defend yourself against them.

Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction

Nothing "goes viral". If you think a popular movie, song, or app came out of nowhere to become a word-of-mouth success in today's crowded media environment, you're missing the real story. Each blockbuster has a secret history - of power, influence, dark broadcasters, and passionate cults that turn some new products into cultural phenomena. In his groundbreaking investigation, Atlantic senior editor Derek Thompson uncovers the hidden psychology of why we like what we like.

Rework

With its straightforward language and easy-is-better approach, Rework is the perfect playbook for anyone who's ever dreamed of doing it on their own. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs who want to get out, and artists who don't want to starve anymore will all find valuable inspiration and guidance in these pages. It's time to rework work.

The Conversion Code provides a step-by-step blueprint for increasing sales in the modern, Internet-driven era. Today's consumers are savvy, and they have more options than ever before. Capturing their attention and turning it into revenue requires a whole new approach to marketing and sales. This book provides clear guidance toward conquering the new paradigm shift towards online lead generation and inside sales.

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

The first book to deal with the problems of communicating to a skeptical, media-blitzed public, Positioning describes a revolutionary approach to creating a "position" in a prospective customer's mind, one that reflects a company's own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of its competitors.

#AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur's Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness

Gary Vaynerchuk—the inspiring and unconventional entrepreneur who introduced us to the concept of crush it—knows how to get things done, have fun, and be massively successful. A marketing and business genius, Gary had the foresight to go beyond traditional methods and use social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to reach an untapped audience that continues to grow.

Extended Summary of Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk

This audio program is a two-hour extended summary of Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World. Gary Vaynerchuk is a leading social media marketing expert and shares his tips, tricks, and secrets on how to "jab" as well as deliver a devastating knockout "right hook".

Publisher's Summary

Why do certain products and ideas go viral? Dynamic young Wharton professor Jonah Berger draws on his research to explain the six steps that make products or ideas contagious.

Why do some products get more word of mouth than others? Why does some online content go viral? Word of mouth makes products, ideas, and behaviors catch on. It's more influential than advertising and far more effective.

Can you create word of mouth for your product or idea? According to Berger, you can. Whether you operate a neighborhood restaurant, a corporation with hundreds of employees, or are running for a local office for the first time, the steps that can help your product or idea become viral are the same.

Contagious is filled with fascinating information drawn from Berger's research. You will be surprised to learn, for example, just how little word of mouth is generated online versus elsewhere. Already praised by Dan Ariely and Dan Gilbert, and sold in nine countries, this book is a must-listen for people who want their projects and ideas to succeed.

This is a must-read for anyone professionally involved in the creation of advertising. It's written for people without background on the subject, but does such a good job in organizing and clarifying the principles that it's a good read for even marketing veterans.

Berger does an excellent job exploring and detailing the message elements that cause people to remember advertising messages and stories, and to want to pass around those stories (with or without embedded ad messages). The book explores 6 principles involved in why things catch on:

This book is a great one-- I think it has more content than "The Tipping Point" from Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm's explanation why things become popular or viral is because of weak ties... But Contagious goes deeper-- Jonah Berger finds 6 reasons. And it all makes sense. Very well written and with a great performance by Keith Nobbs.I bought this book to my father and brother and they are liking it.Read it, and you will like it too.

I find that some of the case studies that were reffered to as evidence for his points were effective but at times lend themselves to other intrepretations from a marketing perspective which leaves doubt as to what really causes something to be contagious.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

Taking on this question, whethere or not he is right or wrong is what makes it interesting. there isn`t much solid evidence or a clear reasoning for why something becomes contagious so it is a brave effort on his part to theorize in a book.

Did Contagious inspire you to do anything?

No. I feel like there are little nuggets of information which are useful but nothing mindblowing enough to make me incorporate it into my work and daily life as a marketer.

The first couple chapters were fairly interesting. However, the rest seemed like regurgitated, general, obvious, useless information. Very simple concepts drawn out far beyond necessary. Alot of filler, waste of time.

Berger does a great job of breaking down the various elements that when working together, create a contagious effect. He then provides a recipe for maximizing the chance that your initiative will be contagious. Super narration and fast listen.

The six principles in making ideas contagious are:1. Social currency (is it cool to know and spread the idea)2. Triggers (is the idea associated with something that comes up often so it triggers people to talk about the idea)3. Emotion (do people care about the idea; people share what they care about)4. Publicity (is the idea or product out in the public)5. Practical Value (are people eager to share the idea with friends)6. Stories (is it delivered in a compelling story, not in a boring message)

The author gives many examples of how each of these principles can make an idea contagious. A supermarket tested playing different types of music and measured the sales of wine. When French music was played, more French wines were purchased. When German music was played, more German wines were purchased. Remember the Kit Kat "Gimme a Break" campaign? As people were taking a break and having a cup of coffee (trigger), the thought of a tasty snack popped into their head (emotion). Or what about the Budweiser's "Wassup" commercials? A bunch of Budweiser drinkers were saying "wassup," which then reinforced the behavior of hanging out with friends and drinking Budweiser. The Movember Foundation made charity giving for men's health (normally private information) into an annual conversation topic as men sported moustaches in November (public).

I work in the area of creative commerce and nearly all of the points made in this book about stickiness and compelling content on the internet were true 20 years ago in other media. The rules of engagement with consumers and audiences have not changed. Just the battlefield has. This alone is good to know, but does not justify the time one must dedicate to listening to this piece — a mixed bag, from which I'm not sure I gleaned many points that I can use in my daily work. It's just more of the same old pseudo-experts attempting to write "rules" on how creative people catch lightning in a bottle. Creative people, on the other hand, do not need those rules, as they know innately how to compel.

This is everything I hoped it would be. The information is solid and the presentation is very well done. If I have any issues it's that I didn't finish the book feeling like I had a great grasp on the techniques he talks about in the book. I'd love to see a PDF with some of it outlined like they have for other books. Just some cheat sheets and bullet points would be fine.

...while Berger does a godly job of outlining what I'm sure are some -- certainly not all -- of the finer points of "Why Things Catch On," I have a couple of gripes.

First, the book is too short. In the end, I felt like I'd just read a long essay rather than a book of substance. Sure the content gave me something to chew on but would it have killed the author to include more real world cases?

Did Keith Nobbs, the narrator, have a cold while reading this? Did he mispronounce some words? I can't be 100% sure until I read the text myself, but it seemed that way. Hey, nobody's perfect but I did rate the performance 4/5 stars. Overall, Nobbs did well.

Other than that, great book. It almost didn't feel like I was reading something from the self help section!

This book is incredible, if you're running your own business or trying to promote anything you HAVE to read this book.

It starts with laying the terminology that will be used in the book and then builds and builds with examples that you can apply to your project straight away.

Also it's so enjoyable and interesting, I listened effortlessly and enjoyed every second. A must must read!

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Francis West

2/26/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Brilliant"

So much learning in this book. Recommend it to all IT company owners. A must read.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

finch76

9/30/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Practical"

Liked that the examples are practical. Easy to follow. Very interesting, that they are memorable!

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

jermaine

8/11/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"GREAT!"

some very insightful information, would definitely recommend for any one who is attempting to generate exposure Dorset their products.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Ben

4/1/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Few points made"

although seemingly interesting throughout listening, in hindsight very few points are really highlighted, and of those most are not original insights

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Alex M

Buckinghamshire

4/16/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Refreshing"

Contagious stood out for me. I've read a tonne of books, often left disappointed with the rehashed content. Contagious has modern and interesting examples and gives a practical recipe for giving your idea every chance of success, all whilst keeping it simple. Well worth the money. Enjoy!

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Oliver Dempsey

7/17/17

Overall

Performance

Story

"great book, really enjoyed"

packed full of information, ideas were constantly re-enforced. everything you need to know about products becoming contagious

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

The Alternative Store

Sheffield, England

5/30/17

Overall

Performance

Story

"excellent"

A must read book for anyone in business. Very well written with great examples/ stories.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Mr. Robins

Thailand

4/24/17

Overall

Performance

Story

"outstanding"

highly practical and rooted in research

very well narrated

buy it now if youreinterested in marketing

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

CJL Review

4/18/17

Overall

Performance

Story

"Good practical suggestions and insight"

Really easy to relate to stories and intelligent insight. Making messages that work will be .... delightful!

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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